by Dot Cannon
A suitcase you can ride–at up to seven miles per hour?!?
Absolutely.
That’s Modobag®–the world’s first smart ride-able carry-on!
We saw Modobag® during CES® 2019, in Las Vegas in early January. In the Eureka Park® Marketplace startup area, attendees were riding it around the exhibit! Judging from their expressions, they were also having a great time.
And we had the opportunity to talk with Modobag® Chief Marketing Officer Tim Ryan, about his smile-bringing innovation.
What are we looking at here?
Tim: This is Modobag®. And Modobag® is in the smart-luggage space. It’s a relatively brand-new concept to the world of travel.
But it’s a growing concept. Smart luggage is an industry that’s valued at about 700 million dollars. It’s expected to grow (to) almost double that, in the next ten to twenty years. That’s what industry analysts say.
Smart luggage is anything…that has at least a USB port. Modobag® is not like anything else in the smart-luggage category. We are the only product that you can ride. So (we’re) changing the way the world travels.
How did Modobag® come about?
Tim: One of my colleagues, Kevin, was traveling through (an airport as) many of us do, oftentimes. (With) more stress than time, and more bags than we have places to put things. And he’s like, “There has to be an easier way, to travel. (What if) we could just motorize our luggage, and ride it, to get from gate to gate?
And he’s like, “Why can’t we do that?” And on his flight, he let that idea marinate. He got to his destination, and he (contacted) three of his buddies and put the concept together, for Modobag® . So we are the world’s first carry-on luggage that you can ride.
It fits in the overhead bin of an aircraft, you can carry on or check the bag. And we should talk a little bit about the battery, ’cause that’s kind of the key feature of smart luggage.
I promise, we will. But first, what’s the journey been like for you, from that concept to now?
Tim: Oh my God, it’s been great fun. It’s been fun, and frustrating, and challenging, and opportunistic, all at the same time.
Any time you’re dealing with new innovations, and new ideas, you’re going to be on a roller coaster. But it has just been a lot of fun. The fun has beaten the frustration, any day.
What were some of the highs and lows of that “roller coaster”?
Tim: The high really is engaging with people, when they are at a show like this, CES®, or the IFA Technology Show in Berlin, and introducing the Modobag® to just typical, everyday consumers.
I do a lot of traveling, and know the hassles of traveling, and others might be new to travel. But they sit on the Modobag® and the first thing that happens, is a smile comes across their face. And they say, “This product is so much fun.” And if you’ve done much traveling at all, you know that a lot of the fun has been taken out of travel.
And so we would hope, with Modobag® , in addition to being a useful product that has function, it also has a lot of fun. It will bring some of the fun back to travel.
People seem to be having a lot of fun rolling across the floor here.
Tim: Yes. And that happens. You kind of feel like a little kid once again when you get on Modobag® . ‘Cause it’s just a lot of fun.
Would you tell me about the lows, too?
Tim: The “low” can be some of the frustrations that you have when you’re putting together a new product, trying to grow as quickly as what the consumer marketplace wants you to do. And so, it’s a good problem to have, that means that there’s a demand for your product. But we’ve had some growing pains, as we have become a more mature company.
You know, it’s a competitive space as well, the travel and tourism and luggage space, we play at all of those intersections. So, you know, the negative frustrations, if we’ve had any, they’ve been well worth it.
The reason I asked that, you make it look easy. But…there’ve probably been one or two nights you’ve (thought), “why are we doing this?”
Tim: Oh, my gosh, yeah. One or two, or five or ten, I think there have been.
And you know, again, keeping up with customer and consumer demand and giving them a product that is high-quality…that’s always a challenge for startup brands like us. And we are a startup, right? So…the people who are investing in our product are the ones who are investing in our future. And we realize that.
I promised you we’d talk about the battery.
Tim: So, the battery is the key thing, and particularly in travel, and in smart luggage. And in smart luggage, there’s been a lot of conversation and controversy…about smart luggage and the fact that (it’s) powered mostly by lithium ion batteries. And the controversy is that they can become overheated in an aircraft cargo hold and combust, and cause a flammable incident. A fire. An explosion.
And so, 99% of all smart luggage products are powered by lithium ion battery sources.
I am thrilled to share with you that we are in the one percent–this is the good one percent–that is titanium-battery sourced. We opted against lithium ion for titanium, which is much more…durable, is higher-charging,…it’s high safety, it’s high-cost, as well.
So our product, which is admittedly on the upper ends of the price point for smart luggage, it’s due to the investment and the innovation that we made up front, (obtaining) really the best battery that we possibly could Modobag® really…might be the future of what battery-powered devices on board aircraft (can be).
(What makes the titanium battery safer?)
Tim: It is virtually impenetrable. And we have worked closely, in the U.S., with the federal regulatory bodies: TSA, FAA, the Transport Association…We want the safety that they do. We want a safe travel experience, obviously.
..So we see them more as a friend, and a collaborator, in this space.
So early on, we told them, “This is our product, this is what we were thinking, what do you think? How can we make it better?
(Our team) just returned from Thailand, a few weeks ago, where we represented the smart-luggage industry to the International Transport Association, talking about the battery technology. We are extraordinarily proud of our battery technology, and it comes at a cost, but we’ve made that investment.
When you say, “it comes at a cost”, (how much is it to the retail consumer, and is Modobag® currently available for sale)?
Tim: It is available now. We’ve actually been in the marketplace for the past year, year and a half…At CES® 2019, we are launching our new battery design….We have made our battery design more innovative and more consumer-friendly, so it literally pops out with one touch (and the consumer can easily recharge it while in the air). And our price point is one thousand, four hundred ninety-five (dollars)….(That’s the price of the high-quality technology.) And one point, about the price: it will come down, in the future.
Hearing the word “battery”, the first question that comes to mind is, “how do I know when to recharge it?”
Tim: It will tell you. Your Modobag® will tell you. (It has an indicator screen, like ) your cell phone. When you see your bars getting down, that indicates that at night, Modobag® needs a recharge. Plug it into a standard outlet, and within about 40 minutes, (you’ll have it 70 percent recharged). It’ll be fully charged and ready to go in about an hour and ten minutes. A full battery charge on Modobag® (will take you) ten miles.
We have two speed settings on Modobag®) , five and seven. So you can go, on a Modobag®, ten miles, at speeds up to seven miles per hour.
I’m here to tell you, if you want to go further than ten miles, and you want to go faster than seven miles an hour, you should not take your luggage. You should probably take a car.
(Laughter.) I’m envisioning people just zooming along. Is there a horn (on Modobag®)?
Tim: There is no horn. People just kind of intuitively get out of your way. And we encourage all Modobag® riders to travel, and ride, responsibly.
What’s been one of the most fun experiences you’ve had, since the creation of Modobag®?
Tim: I think it might have (been) in New York, recently. And it wasn’t even an airport situation. We were out one day–we had just finished cutting a segment of Good Morning America. Good Morning America was totally fun for us.
And we decided to take our Modobags® to Central Park.
…And we started riding, through Central Park, and go by people, and we would turn heads. These people are (saying,) “They’re riding their luggage!”
And we came across some of New York City’s finest. They were riding their horses through Central Park. They stopped us, they got off their horses, we held their horses while they got on our Modobags® and started riding them through Central Park. So that was actually great fun for us.
…At first, we didn’t know. We thought maybe we were in trouble, riding our luggage in the park. That, “Oh my God, the police are after us.”
They were after us so they could find out what we were doing, and they wanted a little bit of the action.
